There is a movement for a ballot initiative in California called TREAT California. It's the brainchild of Dr. Jeannie Fontana. Dr. Fontana seems like a dicey character to me, because she apparently believes that if enough Californians take psychedelic drugs, the problems of mental health will be solved and the world itself will be redeemed.
I would suggest that the initiative should be renamed "TOCS California" with TOCS standing for Trip Out Californians to Save the world" (and TOCS by the way might sound like "tax" with a West Coast accent, which would be appropriate here).
Jules Evans recently called Jeannie Fontana "...the Barbenheimer hoping to bring tax-payer-funded psychedelic therapies to all Californians," in an article with a picture of his subject looking very much like a classic Barbie doll right under the headline, TREAT California: the Manhattan Project of psychedelics?
Evans points out several issues with this intiative, including historical precedent that strongly suggests it could quickly become a corrupt boondoggle (did that happen with the atom bomb, too?!), and the prospect that over-promising benefits like the total salvation of humanity will blow back against promoters.
The corrupt boondoggle issue is raised partly because of Barbenheimer Fontana's own record with the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), an earlier initiative that California taxpayers funded to promote stem cell research. CIRM was fraught with conflicts of interest for 20 years and never developed a stem cell treatment that became available to the public. It ultimately gave about 90% of its funds to the private projects of board members.
Dr. Fontana told Jules Evans that she has learned a lot since she was with CIRM. During the pandemic, she divorced her husband and found universal love in Mexico by eating chocolates made by a shaman with psilocybin and ayahuasca. Then she proceeded on a real magical mystery tour, with ibogaine, MDMA, Ketamine, mescaline, DMT, and lots more psilocybin. Now Dr. Fontana wants to define a new industry through which everyone can take these drugs and be part of "the unifying force of the universe," which she knows in her DNA (?) will enable us all to "have the relationship of knowing."
I sure as hell am reminded(!) ...of Adelle Davis' 1961 book (as Jane Dunlap) about LSD! Davis wrote:
Many hundreds of people given LSD have entered worlds of fantastic beauty where compassion and love have become compulsory. People who have had such experiences usually agree that deep within lie goodness unimaginable, wisdom, music, talents of every variety, joy, peace, humility, love, and spirituality, to name a few.
Adelle Davis died of bone cancer in 1974. Her son told me sadly that his mother's final drug of choice was not LSD, but morphine, in rapidly increasing doses. We'll have to see whether Barbenheimer Fontana can do any better than that.
As the French say, plus ça change....
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